Christmas is almost here!

I can't believe that Christmas is only three short days away! Whenever Milo gets asked what he wants, he replies, "presents". I can't decide if this is a good answer or not, it leaves so many possibilities open!

We had an exciting day yesterday, Lena decided to roll over from front-to-back! I was very surprised. I put her on the floor to do tummy time and went in the kitchen. I heard her fuss after a minute and when I came back out, she was on her back! I couldn't believe it so I put her back on her tummy and she instantly rolled over again! The next time took her a minute or so, and then she wouldn't do it for the camera, of course. She wore herself out and then took a nap. She's 10.5 weeks old, which is why we were so surprised, Milo didn't do this until he was 4.5-5 months old. She did roll over a few more times yesterday but every time I had the camera on her, she wouldn't do it!

We had our Mother's & More holiday party last Friday and here is Lena in her Santa outfit.

I just LOVE this picture!!!

She even sat on Santa's lap. I don't know what she told him she wanted, though, she's kept it a secret.

My adorable kiddos!

Milo helped me wrap presents last week. He worked on Lena's present the entire time I wrapped the rest of them. Her present still looks like this! He's proud of himself and that's what matters.

Milo and I went out and shoveled the sidewalk last week and then played in the snow. He's so cute while playing!!! My neighbor was telling me that she told people at work about Milo playing in the snow and trying to throw "snowballs" (it was NOT packing snow) at me.

I buried him in the snow. He was having a blast! We even caught snowflakes on our tongues! He loves to help shovel, our neighbor's mom even bought him a shovel last winter after seeing him out there helping Jesse.

I hope everyone has a great Christmas!!!

Picture Update

Okay, I haven't put up pictures in awhile, so please bear with me and the 16 I just put on here! Of course they're not in order, either... :)

Lena had her 2-month check-up yesterday and she's healthy! She's 11 lbs 14 oz, up exactly two pounds from last month. She's 23.5 inches long, too, up half an inch. She also got three shots, boo. She screamed her little head off for about a minute, then was fine. She also chose yesterday to start coo-ing a TON! She was very smiley and chatty yesterday, which was great! Jesse was playing a game with Milo last night while she started "talking" to me and Milo came running out saying, "Baby sister calling for me!" So cute!

Milo's doing well, he has a new pair of boots, thanks to a friend of mine who was giving them away, and he loves to wear them! He's also still talking about when Santa comes to visit. As of yesterday he was saying that he and Santa are going to work on Daddy's broken remote control airplane. We are going to a holiday party on Friday and Santa will be there, we will have to see if Milo even talks to him.

Look! Look! She has red eyebrows!!! There may be some of me in her!!! Nothing like taking her places and EVERYONE (including MY family members) says how much she looks like Jesse. :)

Obvious...this is the only one she was smiling in, but her eyes are closed...

Jesse got to go to CA for work last week and we went to pick him up from the airport. His flight was delayed so we went in to wait and Milo loved it! He didn't want to go home. Although when we dropped Jesse off the only thing Milo could talk about as we drove away from the airport was how much he was going to miss the ipad.

We watched a Special Agent Oso one morning and he was learning to use chopsticks. Milo wanted to try some, so I gave them to him for lunch that day. He had fun trying to pick up pineapple, and he did succeed!

Smiling during tummy time. She's getting better at liking it. In the beginning she just wanted to put her head down and go to sleep, now she looks around.

Her first time in a dress!!!

Realizing there are animals that move around on the swing! Now she talks to them!

We went to Hensler's tree farm to get our Christmas tree and this is Milo playing on the train.

Jesse and Milo on the hay ride out to the back field to find our tree.

Lena while we were getting our tree.

Milo and Jesse cutting down our tree.

Me and Lena out in the field.

Obvious, again. She grew so much in a month!

Help! There's a monster in Milo's train table!!! I didn't know he had taken apart his table before and Jesse had told him not to do it again. I walked into his room to find this and thought it was hilarious! Oh well...

We went into Cleveland for the Kain Hanukkah party this last weekend and went back to "A Christmas Story" house. This is the house where they filmed a few scenes for the movie. Here's us with the infamous "leg lamp". We now have pictures of both kids at a few months old touching the butt of the leg lamp!

You know snowmen, have you ever built a "leafman"? Especially one with a Milo head?

It's snowing here, it's actually the most snow we've gotten during this week's storm. The majority of the snow hit west of 31. It's "pretty" snow now!!! We might go play in it after Jesse gets home from work.

Have a great week and stay warm!

Another Quick Update

Things are quiet on the Midwestern front. Lena is still easy going and keeps amazing us with her sleeping at night. Last night she slept from 11-6! All the last week she would sleep between 5 and 6 hours during her first stretch.

Lena also smiles a lot now! The problem is trying to get the camera to snap one in time.

Milo is doing great, too! He loves seeing the houses decorated with lights, he keeps telling us that Santa will only go to the houses with lights (something about that's how he knows where to go). He also has told us that when Santa comes to our house he's going to plays cars and trains with him. I've tried to explain that he'll be asleep when Santa comes, but sometimes it seems that certain things go in one ear and out the other. I did say something last night about how maybe we'll make some cookies on Christmas Eve to leave out for Santa and Milo said, "We need to leave milk out, too!'

Hopefully I'll put up some pictures this week, although we are busy EVERY DAY!!!

Have a great week!

Update

Here are some pictures from the last week:

I took a picture of Lena asleep on the couch and therefore had to take a picture of Milo pretending to sleep...

Lena passed out of the couch, she even put herself to sleep!

You KNOW she's passed out when she spits out her paci! Most of the time she doesn't even fuss to get it back.

Me and Milo walking along Lake Michigan in St. Joseph, MI. We went up there on Saturday and went to the Curious Kids Museum, which we have no pictures from. Milo's favorite part was the apple picking room. They have a fake tree that you can pick "apples" from, put them on a conveyor belt, turn the wheel, and it raises the "apples" to fall back into the tree. They even have a second building and when we were done there, Milo wanted to go back and pick more apples. Jesse and I preferred the second building, there is a big carousel that we all rode, Lena even woke up for it!

We thought we parked in the correct spot to walk out on the pier, but we didn't. Somehow there's another thing to walk out on and as we were going along, Milo found random holes in the cement. He had to stop and look in almost EVERY HOLE and tell us that he couldn't see anything down it...This is him checking one hole out.

On November 2, Jesse had the day off for Election Day (rough job he has...), so we went to the Studebaker Museum. The special exhibit is "Star Cars" and once we saw that the General Lee was there, I knew we'd be going. Jesse will claim that we had to go because they had the Muppet Car, but I think we all know who the fanatics about cars are in our family. This is Jesse, Lena, and Milo with General Lee #72 (they used 300 cars in the making of the show).

This is me with the Muppet Car. It ends up that they used poster paint on the car because it was cheap and that's why most of the color is gone. They have a donation box where they are trying to raise money to get the car repainted.

Jesse has Thursday off for Veteran's Day and we're going to start the day with Lena's first doctor's appointment. What excitement!

Quick Update

Just thought I'd give a quick update on how things are going-GREAT in my opinion! Milo still LOVES Lena, and when his 3 year-old attitude isn't shining through, he's a great child.

Lena is still a very easy baby, for being 4 weeks old today! Where has the time gone??? She's awake more during the day and gets fussy when she is ready to go back to sleep. Usually as soon as you pick her up and put her on her side, she's out! At night she sleeps anywhere from 3-6 hours straight and randomly will be up for about an hour once through the night. When that happens, Jesse takes her downstairs and they watch ESPN. She's much better about sleeping in the pack-n-play, which puts me more at ease, I don't like when she's in bed with us.

That's it for now, I'll update sometime this week and put up some new pictures!

Our Pumpkins!

We carved our "pumpquins" last night, as Milo calls them. Last year Jesse would draw different facial parts on our white board and have Milo choose which ones he would want on his pumpkin. Well, it continued this year, Milo even told Jesse that he (Jesse) needed to draw his (Jesse's) pumpkin's face on the board before carving, too!

This year I got a different pumpkin, rather than a solid orange one, and as I cut the top off of it, we realized that it smelled like a cucumber. Just interesting, that's all!

Milo, Lena, and the pumpkins on the back step.

Our lit pumpkins! Jesse's is on the left, Milo's is in the middle, and mine is on the right.

Milo scooping out the guts from Jesse's pumpkin. He would count the number of seeds he pulled out each time!

Jesse and Milo carving Milo's pumpkin. The dump truck is new from the Striegel family and Milo wanted it to help scoop out the seeds...Luckily it was too big to fit in it, otherwise I think we would've had one DIRTY dump truck!

We will be trick-or-treating with the McCoige's (Harley, Michelle, Lexi and Bella) tomorrow. Lexi is a box of popcorn, Bella is a bag of M&M's, and with Milo as Junior Mints, they're a movie theater snack trio!

Happy Early Halloween!!!

I love, love, love Halloween! I don't know why, but I do! Today was the annual Mother's & More Halloween party, and it was my first outing with both kids by myself. It went well, besides having to go get the stroller out of Jesse's car at work on the way to the party. Milo's costume is a box of Junior Mints (made by me) and Lena is a strawberry. The hat is way too big for her head, but she was warm and cozy in her outfit.

Things are going so well with Lena! She's a great baby that really only cries if she's hungry or dirty. She sleeps pretty darn well at night, last night she went 6 hours straight, ate, and then slept another 3! Both kids are asleep right now and I have no desire to sleep! I am very lucky and relaxed for having an almost 3 week-old!!!

Jesse went back to work this week and I wasn't worried when Monday rolled around. Things have been going very smoothly, I even managed to make Milo's costume, do some baking, and even helped with laundry. Okay, I'm impressed with myself...

Here are some pics from the last two weeks:

Lena's first trip to the zoo was so exciting for her, she slept through the whole thing!

Milo's annual picture on the brass tortoise. I love how Jesse's hat looks like it's on the head...

Milo pretending to sleep next to Lena. He loves to lay down next to her, kiss and hug her, and talk to her. Yesterday he pretended to fall down in front of her and said, "Baby sister save me!"

Lena "playing" on her sheepskin. This onesie fit her last week...I guess she is growing!

Lena's pumpkin that Milo decorated for her at the party today. We will be carving our pumpkins tonight!

This is where Milo chose to sit and eat while all the other kids got their picture taken today...Great attitude, kid...

This is his costume, almost finished. Notice the smile on his face.

This is him in his costume at the party today, notice the face. He refused to show any enthusiasm when I had the camera on. He does love his costume, though, he tells everyone he's a box of candy.

Have a great Halloween!!!

Lena Marie has Arrived!!!

Well, Lena Marie Carlton arrived at 1:41 pm on 10/10/10 at a healthy 9 pounds exactly and 21.5 inches long. She also has dark gray eyes, so they'll probably turn brown. As they pulled her out all they kept saying was how much hair she has and what a "chunk" she was. I'm behind the curtain thinking "what constitutes a chunk when Milo was 10 lbs 4 oz?"

When we brought her home she was down to 8 lbs 2 oz. It's like bringing home a "normal" sized baby!! She fits the length of the newborn onesies, but swims in them everywhere else. She seems so small to us!

Her hair was curly when it came out, and when it is wet it's curly, but it usually goes straight. We shall see what time will bring with it, Milo had curly hair, too, and now it's stick-straight like his dad's!

Lena did look just like Milo when she came out, but her looks have definitely changed. There are times I actually see myself in her, which I can only rarely say about someone else.

She latched on right away in recovery and it seems like she hasn't let go since! She eats very well, and fairly often. We did get lucky last night and she slept for four hours straight! I don't want to get my hopes up, but fingers are crossed for tonight.

Lena is a big sleeper, she's very hard to wake up during the day and actually looks like she's snoozing while she eats. When she does wake up during the day, she's usually up for 45 minutes or so. I don't quite know what to do with myself with a sleeping child, Milo was never a big napper during the day.

Milo LOVES having Lena around, he wants to help (most of the time). When he came into recovery, he sat on Jesse's lap and held Lena. He just looked at her, then touched her nose and said, "BOINK!" He did it about two more times and then we made him stop. It was so cute, though!

Lena will be asleep in the swing and he'll stop what he's doing, run over, grab her paci off the coffee table and say, "Oh no! Baby Sister call for me! Need her pacifier!" He also gave Aunt Stacy and Maizie a tour of Lena's room today and was very excited to point out the changing table and where the diapers are. Ah, to be three again!

Here are a few pictures from the last few days.

Milo loving on Lena in the hospital.

This is one of the photos they took in the hospital. She looks like a doll in this one.

I LOVE this one, since her eyes are open!

This kid CRACKS ME UP!!!

During breakfast this morning Milo got down for a minute (being a bit of a pain in the rear) with one of those little sponge dinosaurs that started out as a capsule. He came back a minute later, climbed back up in his chair and told me that he needed my help getting the dinosaur out of a hole and that I would need a screwdriver. I told him I was going to finish my breakfast and then I would help him.

So we finish our breakfast and I'm sure that he's put it down the register (our house is so old it has registers in the wall that have about 1 inch square openings). Well, we walk right past the register that he has randomly "lost" things down and turn into his bedroom. I'm thinking that he put it down the register in his room, which he's never done. He instead stops in his doorway and points to the opening in the doorway where the door latches. He points in there and says that he put the dinosaur in there. I look and can't see anything, so I just started laughing and told him that I was sorry, but it's lost forever, there's no way Daddy or I could get it out. He then tells me that we need "to get some guys to tear down the house to get the dinosaur out"!!! I told him that wasn't going to happen and laughed again.

He's not upset about it, but man, does that kid know how things work!!! Jesse was confused as to how there was a space there, but I looked again and managed to get my finger almost stuck in the space, there's definitely enough room for him to get his little finger in there and lose a dinosaur. Hopefully he's learned his lesson.

Now, do I let him know that he has 11 more of those dinosaur capsules or do I wait a day or two to do another one???

Milo's 3rd Birthday and Kite Flying

Wow, so much has been going on since my last post about camping! Milo turned three on August 21st, we can't believe it's been that long since he was just a *small* 10 pound 4 oz baby! Oh well, here are some pictures from his birthday party at Fun-n-Fitness and kite flying. Oh yeah, WOW are these picture out-of-order!!! This is long, so be prepared!

Standing on a rock down at the Riverwalk after kite flying.

Pointing to the kite in the sky!

Milo's attempt to get the kite back up in the air. This is the *one* time that he didn't get it back up all by himself! I love how his arms are still in the air, though! He did manage to get it back up 3 or 4 times.

Getting the kite back up in the air.

Milo took this picture of the kite! This is the EASIEST kite to get up! We have a dragon kite that takes a very strong wind (70 mph winds I swear!) to get up, but once it's up, it's awesome!

Milo flying the kite all by himself! He told us later that he's not strong enough to hold the kite, he needs to be bigger and stronger like Daddy. Yeah, right, beefcake!

Waiting to start kite flying, he was very excited, hence the silly grin!

Getting the blocks from Daddy and Mommy. He knew he was getting these and would randomly ask for them the entire week before his birthday. He loves to make a "car wash" for his cars, but it ends up being this long line of blocks. Either way, he's being creative, so I won't complain!

Covering his eyes while Daddy brings out the blocks (they were big enough I didn't wrap them).

Milo enjoying Uncle Brian at Fun-n-Fitness (I apologize, I don't have pictures of him with all of us aunt, uncles, and grandparents).
Opening his card from me and Daddy on his birthday morning.

Milo with his cousins and friends enjoying his new bike from Grandma Jeannie and Pawpaw!

Milo thanking Grandma Jeannie and Pawpaw for all of his stuff.

Cute Milo opening his gifts with the bow on his head.

Milo opening his gifts. It was hard to keep all the kids back, they wanted to help and play with everything as it got opened!

Inside the parachute at Fun-n-Fitness. This is Kalei and Cei is to her right. Kalei turns 10 tomorrow and we can't believe she's that old already!

Milo not looking happy, but this is one of his favorite people in the world, Miss Barb, who is/was his instructor Fun-n-Fitness. The funny thing is that he now has a new teacher, Miss Lisa, and on Tuesday during class, Milo was bouncing down the trampoline, yelling to Miss Barb (who was teaching her own group). He was giving her a thumbs up as he was bouncing and saying, "Miss Barb! Milo doing a good job!" Hilarious! I told her that maybe he needs to be in her group no matter what the age group is, because otherwise he's going to keep distracting her.

Playing with the parachute!

This is Milo's version of vacuuming. When he was younger he LOVED the vacuum cleaner! Now he claims it's too loud and runs from it. A few weeks ago he remembered that he has headphones from boat racing, so he runs and gets them, puts them on, then helps vacuum. I even have video from it.

Milo has also started swimming lessons without a parent! I was very nervous about his first class last week but was slightly hopefully because Bella (Harley and Michelle's youngest) is in his class and she's done it before. Well, there was absolutely NOTHING to be worried about! He LOVES being in this group! There are only 4 kids in the group and they get great one-on-one attention. By the end of his first class he had the "bubble" on his back (little floatie), he would throw a little toy canoe and "swim" to go get it all by himself! Jesse and I are so proud of him and hope he continues to do this well for the next 7 weeks!

As for baby news, we have found out that as long as my body cooperates, Baby Girl Carlton WILL arrive on 10/10/10! We are very excited about this! I'm really hoping that my body cooperates because I found out this week that I need to go see the specialist through the hospital because my fasting numbers for my gestational diabetes are too high. According to the doctor, when I go see the specialist, they will probably order another ultrasound (oh, too bad, I get to see my baby girl again!), and I will have weekly doctor's appointments (which would've been close to happening already since I'm 35 weeks), and a non-stress test at each appointment. Oh, and I'll most likely be put on meds to get my blood sugar under control. Should make my last 4 weeks fly by, right???

Have a great week!